[Pharmwaste] NY drinking water must be tested...

[Tenace, Laurie]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--pharmawater-newyo040
3apr03,0,4854440.story 

NEW YORK - The city's drinking water must be tested to determine whether
trace amounts of pharmaceuticals are flowing from residents' faucets, City
Council members insisted Thursday in an emergency hearing called in response
to an Associated Press investigation. 

The city's Department of Environmental Protection tests its drinking water
for hundreds of contaminants daily but doesn't inspect for pharmaceuticals,
despite research showing minute concentrations of 16 drugs or byproducts in
its watershed in upstate New York, including medications for infections,
seizures and high blood pressure. 

As part of its five-month PharmaWater investigation, the AP surveyed 62 major
water providers nationwide; pharmaceuticals were detected in the drinking
water of 24 of those systems, serving 41 million Americans. 

Officials at 34 major water providers, including New York _ which has the
world's largest unfiltered water supply _ said tests have not been conducted.





"To protect health, we need to be informed about what is in our drinking
water," said council member James Gennaro, the head of the Environmental
Protection Committee, who called the hearing. 

Tests that detected pharmaceuticals in the upstate source waters were
conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey and New York State Department of
Health. 

The city's Department of Environmental Protection, which operates the system
providing water to 9 million, continues to resist calls for testing,
contending there's no regulator-approved test or regimen for detecting
pharmaceuticals in drinking water supplies. 

"It is far too early for DEP to make any predictions about the long-term need
for any particular treatment technology as a response to the presence of
pharmaceuticals," said Paul Rush, deputy commissioner for water supply. 

The agency has a public awareness campaign asking residents near the upstate
watersheds not to flush drugs down the toilet but hasn't created a protocol
for testing drinking water, Rush said. The DEP also is participating in a
city and state roundtable about disposal issues related to pharmaceuticals in
water supplies, he said. 

But Gennaro said the city cannot wait for the federal government to act and
suggested legislation to require testing and to develop a plan to filter the
drugs from the water, if necessary. 

"At the end of the day, it's not the USGS that has to drink the water, it's
not the state (Department of Environmental Conservation) that drinks it up in
Albany; we drink the water," he said. 

Gennaro and other members of the committee criticized the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and the state Department of Health for declining to appear
at the hearing. 

Though measured in concentrations of parts per billion or trillion, it is
unknown how much of the drugs found in the city's watersheds lingers by the
time 1.1 billion gallons reaches the city and northern suburbs daily via a
century-old network of aqueducts and tunnels. 

The drugs reached waterways through human activity along the vast and mainly
rural watershed, which stretches almost from Pennsylvania to Connecticut.
Human and veterinary medicines are excreted or discarded and eventually enter
source waters mostly through residential sewage or farm runoff. 

And while these waters are processed at wastewater treatment plants upstate,
much of the pharmaceutical residue passes right through, studies show. 

As in other cities, human health risks from trace pharmaceuticals are
uncertain, since concentrations in New York source waters are way below
medical doses and further diluted with fresh water en route to the city. 

Though New York does not filter its water, it does disinfect and add
chemicals. It also is building a new filtration plant for water from its
Croton watershed _ its smallest and closest source. 

Gennaro also cited studies mentioned in the AP series that indicate traces of
pharmaceuticals may be harming fish in New York City's Jamaica Bay, within
sight of Manhattan's skyscrapers. Researcher Anne McElroy at Stony Brook
University has found feminized male flounder there and has linked them to
high levels of the female hormone estrone or other estrogenic chemicals
discovered in the waterway.

Laurie J. Tenace
Environmental Specialist
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
2600 Blair Stone Road, MS 4555
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-2400
PH: (850) 245-8759
FAX: (850) 245-8811
Laurie.Tenace at dep.state.fl.us 

Mercury web pages:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/mercury/default.htm

Unwanted Medications web pages:
http://www.dep.state.fl.us/waste/categories/medications/default.htm




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